Austin Reading

Austin's reading is getting very good. He reads signs all the time and today even looked over my shoulder and read an e-mail that I wrote.

From watching him read, and hearing him guess at words he doesn't know, I've come to appreciate how much reading is from recognizing whole words (or patterns) versus sounding out letters. There's a limited number of English words that are easy to sound out anyway. For instance, we read a book about a kid named Marvin who's family was moving. Austin would guess at any word with "M" and "V" in it, not always correctly. But it revealed how his mind is figuring things out.

I found a great book from the library recently by Adam Rex called Pssst!. It's about a girl who visits a zoo and the animals who request favors of her. Each interaction is very cute, with memorable dialogue (the kids can quote big chunks) and even the fairly uneventful pages of the girl walking to the next exhibit are filled with lots of background jokes, puns, and beautiful art. Recommended (also, available for a penny Used on Amazon).

Anyway, the connection to these two facts is that the other day Austin told me he wanted to read "Pissed."